I’ve been looking for ways to get my resume past companies’ Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filters and in front of hiring managers. On Tuesday, based on the recommendation of LHH resume expert Matt Freeman, I installed a Chrome plugin called Jobalytics.
Jobalytics is a resume keyword analyzer. It’s simple to use. Once the plugin is installed, go to the web page of the job you’re interested in, click on the plugin, upload your resume, and start the analysis. It then looks for keyword matches between your resume and the job description and returns a percentage score. The higher the score, the better the match.
Jobalytics functions similarly to the LinkedIn feature that tells you how well-suited you are for a job based on your profile, but also lists the keywords in the job listing that aren’t in your resume. This is a good exercise to do before you begin to tailor your resume for the job. Then, once you’ve made the adjustments to your resume, upload it again to Jobalytics and see how well you’ve improved.
One thing to note: The file type of the resume matters. On a couple of job listings, for the same position, the .docx version of my resume scored higher than its .pdf counterpart. I plan to try other file types to see if that has an effect on the score. But, whether or not a less common file format works better for the analysis, only types known to preserve the formatting of your resume, like .docx or .pdf (if it’s an option) should be used on the application, Freeman says.
Only time will tell how effective Jobalytics will be in getting me interviews. If and when it does, I’ll update this post.
